Web Performance, Branding, and Social Media
In: GSM
16 Oct 2007Samantha’s second Samsung A560 died last week, so I got mad and called Sprint to try and get out of the contract. No way — a kidney and my eldest child is the only way to get out of this deal with the devil.
So, until March 2008, the phone will be powered down and stuck [...]
In: RANTING
9 Sep 2007In today’s Boston Globe, there is an article discussing why Facebook went to the Valley instead of staying in the Boston area (article online).
Having now lived in both areas for nearly equal amounts of time, I can tell you that there are substantial differences between them. People from Boston may violently disagree, but I have found [...]
In: Life
22 Aug 2007My system has a daily job to collect and aggregate the IP Blocks distributed by the five registrars into a single database, and then provide high-level WHOIS information for this data. If you want to try this yourself, the interface here.
On an extremely irregular basis, I aggregate the statistics from this data, and present it [...]
In: Canada| Immigration| Life| RANTING
14 Jul 2007It seems that more than the usual immigration backlog reduction process has been at work in the USCIS. There are two likely scenarios that appear to be running around immigration circles these days, regarding the Green Card slot tease that has turned into such a furore.
The first is that the Department of State, which issues [...]
In: Life
11 Jun 2007We have been in Wasaga Beach, Ontario for the last four days, and it is a wonderful place to turn off your brain.
So far we have spent the weekend celebrating Samantha’s grandmother’s 100th birthday, then we have decided to do as little as possible. Shopping in Collingwood (without the boys; go Grandparents!), and hanging with [...]
In: Software| Technology
22 May 2007I have been using Skype as a landline pretty exclusively for the last 6 months, but the quality of the service has been degrading rapidly. Today, I called Samantha from the office and she said it sounded like I was calling from inside a tin can.
So, on a recommendation from a co-worker, I am giving [...]
In: GrabPERF| Web Performance
20 Apr 2007Many thanks to Otis Gospodnetic of Simpy for putting me in contact with Benjamin Reitzammer. Benjamin has graciously set up the GrabPERF measurement script on his server in Zurich.
Now that the Europeans have a growing presence on the GrabPERF Network, we need some locations in the US and Asia-Pacific.
Tags: GrabPERF, Simpy, Benjamin Reitzammer, measurement agent, [...]
In: RANTING
20 Apr 2007Ian Holsman was standing in the bank, when he overheard a woman getting a bank draft to send to the Netherlands to claim her treasure. [here]
Avarice, it is thy failing.
Stupidity is pretty high on the list, too.
Tags: Nigerian scams, 419 scams, greed, avarice, stupidity
My side project, GrabPERF, is looking for a few good measurement locations.
Right now, there are only five measurement locations, two of which are in my basement, on my personal Internet connection. I am hoping, through this pledge drive, to find a number of additional locations. Areas desperately needed include:
East Coast, USA
West Coast, USA
Midwest, USA
UK
Asia-Pac
Southeast Asia
Australia [...]
I am writing up a client presentation for next week, and I just realized just how flawed Internet Explorer is. Microsoft claims that the browser is standards compliant. Yet it still doesn’t support HTTP pipelining.
And the frustrating part? They won’t tell us why. I have my suspicions, which include TCP stack issues and a flawed [...]